It’s not about the X’s and O’s. It’s about the Jimmy’s and Joe’s. That old football saying means – personnel > scheme. You can have the greatest scheme on paper but if a busload of Alex Kozora’s (all-state team manager, I’ll have you know) matches up against Alabama, it doesn’t matter how good my plan looks on paper.
But in an NFL landscape where the talent margin is thin, even pitting the best teams against the worst, scheme matters a whole lot. And if you win that battle enough, or at least in enough key moments, you can pull off the upset.